new big question mark in taskbar from HP Support Assistant

I have HP Support Assistant set to run weekly and generally (always?) take its upgrade suggestions. This week it suddenly inserted its big question mark (like its desktop shortcut) into the taskbar. I finally figured out I can disable that using the Notifications Settings tab's option to “receive notifications” as Pop-ups only. ﻿

Question 1 - why does HP insert an icon into the taskbar that is 50% taller than the taskbar, thus making the taskbar take up more space on the screen? Maybe the Assistant is ignoring the taskbar setting "use small icons"? At least the Start button sticks out the top of the taskbar without making the whole taskbar taller.

Question 2 - what changed recently that caused that to start appearing? Since the HP Support Assistant﻿ on the download page ...

... says it was last changed 2011-06-23﻿, why did its behavior change due to an update on 9/21? I don't think I changed the settings this week so as to cause this. My suspicion is that the update page's info is incorrect, and that the Assistant was updated more recently. Am I wrong?

Question 3 - Since windows has a way to manage the notifications area (see Start > properties > taskbar > Notification area > customize), why did HP decide to create its own way to insert its iconology into the taskbar? Or, perhaps more to the point, how (besides this posting) do I vote for HP to get with the (Windows) program?

Question 4 - why does HP have two pages for downloading the Assistant? I raise the question about having two pages since duplication always leads to the opportunity for information to get out of sync between the copies. ﻿There's the page accessed by this path: